Aadhar (meaning "support" or "base" in Hindi) is India's rather ambitious Unique Identification project (UID), where it is envisaged that every Indian will have a unique id system, which will then link up all the kinds of IDs in a single system. The other day, I went to get myself registered for this. I had read that there were several people who were against it because of privacy concerns.
Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try. After getting the forms and filling it up, I went to a registration center. I had to stand in a queue with about 25 people ahead of me. The service time require per person is anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes, more so if the forms have not been filled up correctly.
When my turn arrived, I was quite impressed by the entire setup used for the registration. There were fingerprint scanners, retina scans, and the information was filled up in both English and Devnagiri. After verification by me, the person at the counter prints out a receipt in duplicate, and hands us one of the copies.
What really pissed me off is that at the bottom of the form on the screen is a checkbox called "Make information public" or something to that effect. The person did not even bother asking me, and simply went ahead and clicked it. Now, imagine all these personal details floating around on the Internet, and its a very good material for getting a fake user id or for misuse in changing personal details on important accounts.
No matter how secure they say the system is, this is one thing that Aadhar will not get my support for.
Nevertheless, I decided to give it a try. After getting the forms and filling it up, I went to a registration center. I had to stand in a queue with about 25 people ahead of me. The service time require per person is anywhere between 10 to 15 minutes, more so if the forms have not been filled up correctly.
When my turn arrived, I was quite impressed by the entire setup used for the registration. There were fingerprint scanners, retina scans, and the information was filled up in both English and Devnagiri. After verification by me, the person at the counter prints out a receipt in duplicate, and hands us one of the copies.
What really pissed me off is that at the bottom of the form on the screen is a checkbox called "Make information public" or something to that effect. The person did not even bother asking me, and simply went ahead and clicked it. Now, imagine all these personal details floating around on the Internet, and its a very good material for getting a fake user id or for misuse in changing personal details on important accounts.
No matter how secure they say the system is, this is one thing that Aadhar will not get my support for.
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